What with Edith's pregnancy, Mary's suitors and Rose's affair, we're all set
for a showdown next week, says Ceri Radford

Downton Abbey (ITV), the penultimate in the series, was a tale of visual contrasts for Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) . One minute, she was rolling in pig muck; the next, she was looking her pristine, coiffed, glittering best as the dinner gong sounded, with no fewer than three suitors chasing her in towards the candelabras. At least the muck showed her off in a flattering light: she slipped while proving to aristocrat-baiting researcher Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden) that she would literally get her hands dirty to rescue some distressed pigs and help the family estate. What class warrior can resist an earl’s daughter with dirt in her hair?

The whole porcine emergency plot felt a little unlikely, in keeping with a series which has stretched plausibility like a fat child jumping on a trampoline. (Would Mary have worn high-heeled evening shoes for a long schlep out to the pig sty? For that matter, would the toothsome Lord Gillingham (Tom Cullen) have asked her to marry him after just a few days together, insisting the inconsolable widow had to decide immediately or lose him forever? And why were the Crawley family so unfazed by the Dowager Countess’s (Maggie Smith) illness?)

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Let us not quibble, however. Unflinching adhesion to logic is not the best frame of mind for watching Downton, which should be enjoyed with a few schooners of sherry and an ice bucket full of salt. Besides, Mary’s return to life has carried the series, providing finely acted emotional ballast against the silliness of Thomas’s (Rob James-Collier) scheming and the roiling melodrama of the Anna and Bates storyline. In next Sunday’s finale, I’m looking forward to seeing whether Mary will crumble for the cynical Blake; the spaniel-like family friend; Evelyn Napier (Brendan Patricks); the smouldering Gillingham; or whether all three suitors will set on one another with fish knives while Carson sings a sea shanty.

Meanwhile, there were some deflty handled scenes for Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael). Impregnated by a man who has vanished, she decided to keep the child, pointing to an interesting conversation ahead around the Crawley breakfast table. Rose (Lily James) also looked set to make the Earl choke on his toast, by canoodling with the black jazz singer, Jack Ross (Gary Carr) and appearing poised to elope.

All in all, the finale should be explosive stuff, with the Earl away on ominous family business, and Bates set to make good on his promise to murder the valet who attacked his wife, in some kind of improbable, Sunday-night-on-the-sofa version of a Jacobean revenge tragedy. It’s in the smaller moments, though, that the programme still shines: from America being added to the list of modern inventions which vex Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol), to the blundering love life of Alfred (Matt Milne), TV’s most supine of Lotharios. Let's hope that the season goes out with a snide whisper as well as a bang.

Did you enjoy Sunday night's episode? Do you think Mary should never have been seen in a pig sty? What do you think of the new Downton baby on the way? Share your comments below, and read our reader reviews from last week.